Extreme sports need extreme cameras. If you want an sportsperson’s eye view of skating, biking, or parkouring, you can’t exactly just tape a Flip camera to your brow. Helmet cameras are, like their name implies, record cameras designed for mounting on a helmet. They’re well-built, austere to use, and proposed for, well, idiotic-stunt use. The Contour+ stands out as one of the most map-rich, streamlined consumer-level helmet cameras on the promote. The camera facial appearance a 170-top wide-angle lens that rotates, along with GPS and Bluetooth radios, and it can confirmation 1080p record. But none of these facial appearance can make up for the fact that the camera’s record feature isn’t very excellent and the $499.99 (supervise over) price is too steep.
Design
Physically, the Contour+ is tiny and striking. It’s a brushed metal cylinder with a long rhomb on the underside to hold the mounting connector, two indicator illumination, a microphone input, and the micro-HDMI-out port. On the front of the camera, you’ll find the pivoting lens, flush hostile to the cylinder. It can rotate 270 degrees, so you can go it nearly in any case of how you mount the camera. The aforementioned sliding batter sits on the top of the cylinder, contrary the mount connector. A sliding black fake cap on the end holds a rubber power batter and two rubber doors for the USB and HDMI relations. The cap can also be slid open to expose the relations frankly (even as reducing the power pin to a tiny fake check), along with a microSD card slot, the array, and a batter that joystick whether the camera records in 1080p at 30 frames per second or 720p at 60 frames per second. In view of the fact that the camera’s proposed for helmet-based sports and recovery activities, like riding a dirt bike or skateboarding, the 720p mode at 60 frames per second is preferable; more frames means smoother shift, and the Contour is all in this area capturing shift.
As a very compact helmet camera, the Contour+ is built very another way from more conventional record cameras. First, there’s no cover. You need to trust the camera to confirmation record of what you’re seeing by how it’s mounted on your helmet, and because of the very wide lens that’s generally no problem. If you really need a viewfinder, the camera can stream record via Bluetooth to your iPhone or iPod upset (with the accompanying Contour app, which is free in the iTunes store), but when it does that you can’t really confirmation even as by it as a viewfinder, effectively building it only a tool to make sure the camera is set up the way you want it. Second, there’s no pin to initiation recording. A power pin on the back turns the camera on and off, and a generous sliding batter toggles between recording and Bluetooth modes. If you turn the camera on even as the batter is set to confirmation, it will at once confirmation (and the confirmation character will set alight up). If you turn it on even as the batter is set to Bluetooth, it will either connect to a paired Bluetooth device or do nothing. If you use the camera lacking pairing, you can handle the sliding batter as a generous, clunky confirmation pin.
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Specifications
- Weight
- 5.3 oz
- CCD Resolution
- 5 megapixels
- Record Recording Plot
- MicroSD
- Still Image Recording Plot
- MicroSD
Contour
Above and further than the 170-top lens, the Contour+ includes Bluetooth and GPS functions to give explanation for the fact that it expenditure twice as much as the ContourHD and $150 more than the ContourGPS (which has built-in GPS, but no Bluetooth; you need to dissipate another $30 on the Connect View card to enable that map on the ContourGPS). The GPS gathering is, frankly, awesome. It tracks location, speed, and height surrounded by the show file, and shows your send as the record the the boards in the built-in Storyteller software. Lacking this gathering, Storyteller is just a very weak, austere record editor for allotment what you spring out. With this gathering, it’s an interactive map that shows you exactly where you were at any agreed moment on the record. The GPS requires a four-satellite lock to confirmation all the data, so if you’re in a crowded city it force be hard to get an right conception. In our test dirt bike ride through Brooklyn, even if, the camera was accurately tracked as it stirred down the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at high speeds.The Bluetooth map is less helpful, and actively gets in the way with its condition. You can’t change any of the camera’s settings above and further than the 1080p30/720p60 batter lacking the Contour app and an iPhone or iPod Upset. With the app, you can top out relentless still photo mode, a few additional record modes, and even change some image settings. Also, as fantastic as the remote viewfinder force signal, it’s laggy and jerky. There’s a excellent near-second lag between the camera and the cover, and in view of the fact that you can’t really confirmation whatever business with it, it’s only helpful to make sure the camera is facing the right way and its lens is at the right angle.
Contour Performance
Record feature isn’t fantastic. When shooting at home or at nighttime, the footage becomes inevitable loud as the sensor has to boost its sensitivity to show whatever business in low set alight. That’s understandable, and compelling into account most activities you’d do with a helmet came involve sunlight, it’s not a huge problem. Sorry to say, the Contour+’s record doesn’t look that excellent under bright sunlight, either. The depiction becomes blown out in the sun, the bright set alight washing out or outright destroying fine details in the highlights. Above and further than the exposure and noise issues, the record austerely isn’t very bracing. It captures passage well, but if you want to pick out fine details, even with the camera held very still, you’re going to be facing a challenge. To its credit, the 170-top lens only distorts the depiction vaguely, curving the edges a modest but not to the top where it seems like a fish-eye lens.
At $500, the Contour+ is an overpriced camera with underwhelming record feature. Sure, its GPS map is incredibly fun and its Bluetooth viewfinder map is a clean novelty, but when the final record just doesn’t look that excellent, none of that really matters. The 170-top lens is the only factor that bumps this model up $150 past the ContourGPS, and it’s not exactly necessary except you need really wide angles paired with affront barrel distortion. In any case, with blown out highlights, loud dark scenes, and soft details, the Contour+ just doesn’t go a excellent enough job to give explanation for its price tag. If you really need a helmet camera, even if, you don’t have a lot of choices, so the Contour+ is value a look.
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